There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the . With some calling the assessment process, many parents are left wondering about the accuracy of the data.
At the same time, we've seen for alleged sexual abuse. In some instances, parents at the affected schools were shocked to learn that prior incidents were "noted" on the offending teacher's file.
My kids attend a private Catholic school. Still, I was no less horrified when I read that a teacher previously accused of inappropriate conduct, Wilbert Cortez, was reportedly able to find work at another school. The New York post reported that only this month, after a string of alleged sex abuse incidents, were principals given access to employee misconduct files when picking staff.
Evidentally, we need to be concerned not only with the teachers' capabilities as educators, but also that they aren't going to harm kids. NY1 counted five NYC Dept. of Education employees who were arrested this month, and I must add the macabre qualifier that the tally is as of Tuesday.
It’s obvious that these cases do not represent the majority, but we still can’t turn a blind eye.
I may have veered into a different topic's territory, but the point that I am trying to stress is that we do deserve to know all that we can about the people that are spending six or more hours a day with our children.
We need an open and full assessment of competency and suitability—and it should go without saying that the information we do receive needs to be reliable. Let's hope that next time, the heads of the DOE are competent enough in their own right to provide data we can understand and trust.
